Happy Wednesday everyone! This week I wanted to talk about using positive and negative space. If you don’t already know what that is, or need a quick refresher, here’s an example:
Positive space is the thing itself, and negative space is the lack of the thing, or what’s around it. On the left, you can see that the “Hi” is written using negative space, because the color exists all around it, but the letters themselves are empty. On the right, the “Hi” is an example of positive space, because it is the thing itself (by contrast, the white all around it is negative space).
This is something a lot of artists make use of, or at least are aware of, and the lettering community is a part of that too!
I was feeling inspired by spring (despite the icky weather today), so I drew some more in-depth pieces involving flowers that use positive and negative space.
Which one do you like better? I hope you all have a great week and hopefully we’ll start to see some flowers blooming soon 🙂
The tips are flexible enough that you can use them as if they were brush pens, but you can also use them on their sides like highlighters, and with an even amount of pressure to get a consistent line. Depending on how hard you press, the thickness varies wildly, which is another great quality because it makes them super versatile. Another positive is that, because they’re inexpensive, you don’t have to feel bad about overusing them, experimenting with them, or not taking great care of them.
